South Sudan, which gained its independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 after years of civil war, is on the precipice of another all-out civil war involving opposing political and ethnic factions within the country. South Sudan has in the last week experienced extensive civilian casualties, including extra-judicial killings targeting innocent civilians because of their ethnicity.
Mass graves have been discovered. Approximately 81,000 people have been displaced from their homes, with more than half of them seeking refuge in UN compounds which themselves have been vulnerable to attacks. Two UN peacekeepers were killed and one wounded last week. This week three more UN peacekeeper personnel were injured at the UN base in Bor in Jonglei State. The situation is threatening to get even worse as the violence continues to spiral.
Intent on not looking the other way and abandoning civilians in danger as the United Nations and the international community were accused of doing in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990’s, the UN Security Council acted with unusual speed. On December 24th, it passed unanimously a resolution addressing the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in South Sudan. The resolution called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and authorized an increase in the overall force levels of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
UNMISS currently has approximately 7,600 peacekeeping forces in South Sudan, with a budget close to a billion dollar a year. But the present force levels proved to be incapable of preventing attacks by thousands of rampaging armed rebels on the civilians whom UNMISS was tasked to protect. Indeed, the UN peacekeepers were also fired upon, and at least one UN base was overrun by armed youths who vastly outnumbered the UN defenders.
The Security Council resolution, according to Ban, will help boost security, reinforce peacekeeping bases and provide critical assets. It authorizes the strengthening of UNMISS with 5,500 more troops, and 440 more police. That means there will be a total of 12,500 troops of all ranks, as well as a police component up to 1,323.
“The world is watching - and the world is acting,” said Ban. At the same time, however, the Secretary General conceded that “Even with additional capabilities, we will not be able to protect every civilian in need in South Sudan. The parties are responsible for ending the conflict. This is a political crisis which requires a peaceful, political solution.”
The current crisis was precipitated when Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, claimed that the former vice president Riek Machar, whom Kiir removed from office last summer, had attempted a coup. Machar has denied the charge, and his supporters have claimed that President Kiir is using accusations of a coup attempt as a pretext to further consolidate his own power. Aside from the political power struggle, there is an ethnic dimension to the crisis. President Kiir is a member of the Dinka ethnic majority, and his rival, the former vice-president Riek Machar, is a member of the Nuer ethnic minority. Unlike in other parts of Africa, there does not appear to be a religious war underway in South Sudan, but jihadists from nearby countries are able to exploit any signs of instability, as was witnessed not long ago in Mali.
Adding to the crisis are reports that Nuer militia have taken control over some valuable oilfields within South Sudan, disrupting the flow of oil north to the Republic of Sudan for export. This in turn is endangering an already fragile economy and could lure the Republic of Sudan, from which South Sudan seceded after the earlier bloody civil war, to enter the fray in order to secure the supply of oil from the South Sudanese oilfields. The Republic of Sudan has the pipelines and ports for export, but not the oil itself.
Having called upon South Sudanese President Kiir and opposition political leaders to come to the table and find a political way out, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said: “Now is the time for South Sudan’s leaders to show their people and the world that they are committed to preserving the unity of the nation that was born out of their long struggle for independence.”
In order to bolster the UN peacekeeping forces in South Sudan as expeditiously as possible pursuant to the Security Council resolution, the UN is planning to move troops, police and assets temporarily from other missions, such as from its peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Although the Secretary General would not offer any details on the inter-mission transfers, he told reporters after the Security Council meeting that he had asked “the leaders of those countries who are providing their troops in the nearby region to transfer, temporarily, some battalions. We need at least five battalions and police officers and attack helicopters and utility helicopters, transport airplanes.” When asked when he expects the new forces to arrive in South Sudan, Ban Ki-moon was non-committal.
Although the Security Council stated that the temporary inter-mission transfers were to be accomplished “without prejudice to the performance of the mandates of these United Nations missions,” the problem with inter-mission transfers is that it is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, is a neighbor of South Sudan. It is still beset by armed rebel groups, even after the neutralization of the armed M-23 rebels by the Congolese army and UN peacekeeping forces stationed there. The UN had announced that its next priority in the DRC would be to disarm the Hutu FDLR militia that threatens not only the DRC itself but also threatens neighboring Rwanda. The FDLR includes former genocidaires (people who took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda), who fled Rwanda in 1994 to avoid prosecution for the horrific crimes they committed against Rwanda’s Tutsi population.
Moving UN peacekeeping resources from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to South Sudan means less peacekeepers available to deal with the FDLR and other dangerous armed groups who continue to threaten the lives of innocent civilians in the DCR.
The Central African Republic (CAR), which is also a neighbor of South Sudan, is in a state of near collapse. There is a severe humanitarian crisis, with hundreds killed and more than 710,000 people uprooted within the CAR. More than 75,000 others have fled into exile, including into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In response to the growing violence against civilians, the UN Security Council passed a resolution earlier this month that gave African and French troops authorization to use force to impose peace in the CAR with logistical support from the UN. It directed Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to start preparing for the possibility of deploying a future UN peacekeeping force of between 6000 to 9000 troops to take over the primary responsibility to restore order and protect civilians. Ban Ki-moon is in the process of assessing this option, which would require formal Security Council approval to put into operation. However, with the current crisis in South Sudan sucking up scarce resources from peacekeeping missions in other countries, Ban’s assessment of how to deal with the Central African Republic’s need for peacekeeping forces as well has now become even more complicated. Moreover, there a real possibility that the violence in South Sudan could spill over into the neighboring Central African Republic, or vice versa, sweeping the UN peacekeeping forces in South Sudan and any forces that might be introduced into the Central African Republic into a spreading regional vortex of violence.
When I asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to comment on the danger of such spill-overs from one country to the next and how it affected his assessment of what to recommend to the Security Council regarding the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic, he replied:
“I do not want to see any spillover effect of this current crisis in South Sudan. My urgent hope and appeal to the countries concerned and parties concerned is that, first of all, [they] address this issue as soon as possible through political means without letting it further spread, without causing any regional implications. And as far as the situation in the Central African Republic is concerned, the situation is still very, very fluid and dangerous. That is why I am very carefully assessing the situation there.”
Fine, but that answer does not address the question of how the impact of the growing crisis in South Sudan and the planned immediate expansion of UN peacekeeping forces there will figure into Ban’s assessment of what the UN – already stretched very thin in terms of peacekeeping resources – can do in the Central African Republic.
Nevertheless, the UN Security Council has demonstrated its political will, in concert with the African Union, to address directly with concrete actions the breakdown of civil order in some African countries before the violence spirals completely out of control. Indeed, about three-fourths of the Council's time is spent on African issues.
When there are major geopolitical issues dividing the permanent members of the Security Council, such as the divisions over Syria that have largely paralyzed the Council except on dealing with Syria’s chemical weapons, the Security Council can play no constructive role in helping to resolve the crisis. However, when there are no such major geopolitical issues at stake, the Security Council has proven at times that it is able to act in a constructive manner to try and save the lives of innocent civilians. Whether the Security Council’s actions to address the violence in South Sudan and the Central African Republic succeed remains to be seen.
